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I thought this was going to be as easy as 'if you can't reach /monitors.txt, then the site is down' but seriously, does nobody else see a problem with your mon

by nikcub 15y ago

I thought this was going to be as easy as 'if you can't reach /monitors.txt, then the site is down' but seriously, does nobody else see a problem with your monitoring configuration being hosted on the site being monitored? It is a bit like asking a hospital patient to keep an eye on his own charts and to let you know if anything goes wrong .. do people really switch monitoring companies often enough to justify having a standard configuration format? ps. cucumber syntax is horrible because it perpetuates a 'everybody speaks english' view of the world

rednaught 15y ago
It is meant to be used mostly as a configuration tool for the monitoring host. If the developer has recently updated/deployed then they are probably working on the site and can ensure monitors.txt is available.
gojomo 15y ago
Seems like a service would want/need to cache older versions of monitors.txt, and continue running them for some configurable persistence period before accepting a missing/new/possibly-malicious monitors.txt as giving a true read.
eliot_sykes 15y ago
Lol yes I'll add something on this to the site... My thoughts are the monitoring provider would keep a copy of monitors.txt and work from that, and check for changes regularly. If they can't get to monitors.txt that would trigger an alert.
mseebach 15y ago
> but seriously, does nobody else see a problem with your monitoring configuration being hosted on the site being monitored? So, if the file is unreachable, something is probably very very wrong. Malicious changing of the file could be addressed by firing an alarm when the file changes. > It is a bit like asking a hospital patient to keep an eye on his own charts and to let you know if anything goes wrong .. No, it's a bit like leaving the chart with the patient, trusting that he won't destroy it. > do people really switch monitoring companies often enough to justify having a standard configuration format? Do people really switch monitoring companies rarely enough to justify keeping a myriad of incompatible configuration formats? This also has the benefit of you owning all of your own data. > ps. cucumber syntax is horrible because it perpetuates a 'everybody speaks english' view of the world Cucumber syntax is great because a lot of people are already used to it. Oh, and it's completely language independent too. https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/tree/master/examples/i18n https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/tree/master/examples/i1...

by nikcub 15y ago

rednaught 15y ago

It is meant to be used mostly as a configuration tool for the monitoring host. If the developer has recently updated/deployed then they are probably working on the site and can ensure monitors.txt is available.

gojomo 15y ago

Seems like a service would want/need to cache older versions of monitors.txt, and continue running them for some configurable persistence period before accepting a missing/new/possibly-malicious monitors.txt as giving a true read.

eliot_sykes 15y ago

Lol yes I'll add something on this to the site... My thoughts are the monitoring provider would keep a copy of monitors.txt and work from that, and check for changes regularly. If they can't get to monitors.txt that would trigger an alert.

mseebach 15y ago

> but seriously, does nobody else see a problem with your monitoring configuration being hosted on the site being monitored? So, if the file is unreachable, something is probably very very wrong. Malicious changing of the file could be addressed by firing an alarm when the file changes. > It is a bit like asking a hospital patient to keep an eye on his own charts and to let you know if anything goes wrong .. No, it's a bit like leaving the chart with the patient, trusting that he won't destroy it. > do people really switch monitoring companies often enough to justify having a standard configuration format? Do people really switch monitoring companies rarely enough to justify keeping a myriad of incompatible configuration formats? This also has the benefit of you owning all of your own data. > ps. cucumber syntax is horrible because it perpetuates a 'everybody speaks english' view of the world Cucumber syntax is great because a lot of people are already used to it. Oh, and it's completely language independent too. https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/tree/master/examples/i18n https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/tree/master/examples/i1...